NOVEL SWITCH: Screenwriting has paid many novelists’...

NOVEL SWITCH: Screenwriting has paid many novelists’ bills. According to historian Tom Dardis, writer Nathanael West earned no more than $350 a week at Republic Studios (now the CBS Studio Center) in Studio City in the late ‘30s. But West’s steady job at “Repulsive Pictures” allowed him to write his Hollywood masterpiece, “The Day of the Locust,” which produced royalties of just $300.

MR. JOYBOY: English writer Evelyn Waugh hated Southern California, but he found a great subject here--at Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park. During a 1947 visit, Waugh became obsessed with Forest Lawn, visiting it several times a week and chatting up its chief embalmer. Waugh’s “The Loved One,” featuring embalmer extraordinaire Mr. Joyboy, was the result.

NEW PLAY: Among the Valley’s working writers is best-selling author Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey (above) of Studio City. Her recent projects include distilling drafts of a play by her late husband, Oliver Hailey, who died in 1993. The result is “Round Trip,” a biting comedy to premiere Feb. 17 at the Ventura Court Theatre in Studio City. Best known for “A Woman of Independent Means,” Hailey is working on a new book of nonfiction. “I’m calling it, ‘To Be Continued.’ ”

SCOTT: In 1939, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved to a guest house at the Encino estate of actor Edward Everett Horton. There, Fitzgerald hired a 20-year-old secretary with no industry ties to help with his Hollywood novel, which became “The Last Tycoon.” Now living in Beverly Hills, Frances Kroll Ring recalled that Fitzgerald’s year on Amestoy Avenue was a “busy and peaceful time” in his troubled life.

KIDDIE LIT: Headquartered in West Hills, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators offers a wide variety of services to people who create books for children. Founded in 1968, the organization now has 9,000 members worldwide. Writer Sue Alexander of West Hills is board chairwoman.